"Your opponent has disabled chat"

I think you're missing the point. You don't think it matters that they don't want to talk during the game. Great. Feel free to disable chat. I support that. I just don't want to play you anymore. So, give me the ability to configure my account so that I don't have to play people that don't chat. I'm not asking for you all to suffer. I'm just asking to be able to not play you without being punished for it. If I "abort" when I get stuck playing you, something that takes away from the pleasure of the game for me, I get a warning that I shouldn't abort too many times. 
Someone doesn't want to chat. Others (me) don't want to play them. Chess.com should give both types of people the ability to do that. 
That's all I'm saying. We can disagree about whether "it matters" objectively. I don't think it matters whether it matters. I'm just saying that if some users have chosen to disable features for their competitors, those competitors should have the option to play in those games with disabled features. 
That makes perfect sense to me. If you turn off some other feature for me -- ., my ability to get notifications -- I should be able to say: "What in the world? The other user just disabled a feature for me. I don't want to play them!" That is perfectly reasonable.

Before and after games, at tournaments, people usually talk and are at least expected to interact in sportsmanlike ways. Handshake, greeting, "good luck", etc. Normal stuff.
But maybe disabling chat during the game should be allowed. I agree that it would be torture if competitors could talk during games in tournaments. (I had a guy like that at a recent tournament. I didn't report him or anything, but it was super-annoying.)

The best argument for allowing chat to be disabled is children who play. Preemptively blocking some of the offensive folks would be good. I'd rather my kids not deal with that sort of thing. 
But, as someone who does not disable chat, I can say this: disrespectful opponents are very rare. Most never chat, and the ones who do usually send a simple greeting/congrats/gg/etc.

Exactly. Then, if you don't have chat muted, encountering a chatty opponent ("oh good move, bro"... "ha ha, you missed a tactic there!", "so, how long you been playing chess?"), turning off chat feels rude. I have my Chat set to "Friends Only". And when I see that "chat disabled" message, it never occurs to me to take it personally. This is chess, not Monopoly. Most players take it at least somewhat seriously, and it's not unimportant to concentrate. Finally, especially if it's been a long game, and assuming they don't have cgat turned off, I often turn it on just at the last to say, "gg" or, if they won, "well done", or whatever.

Name one. And the option to never be matched with opponents who have chat disabled or set to "friends only" is never going to happen. The only thing this thread has accomplished is making you appear needy and overly solicitous. It reminds me of this guy I met playing online poker. He'd join a table then greet everyone. If you didn't greet him in return, he had the habit of "punishing" the table by stalling every time it was his turn to decide his bet. Being that needy is at the very least childish, and probably indicates a self-esteem issue, and it's far too rare to be make your solution a good idea. In all my years of playing here I've heard your complaint exactly never.

Sure, a big human overgrown baby, needing nurturing so much you can't even play a game of chess without being petted. Pathetic.

settings > social > chat & messaging